Article: Rail passengers in Melbourne fed up with late trains

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From the Herald Sun click here!

Rail passengers in Melbourne fed up with late trains

Rail passengers in Melbourne fed up with late trains

    * Staff Writer
    * From: Herald Sun
    * March 12, 2010 12:00AM

RAIL passengers in Melbourne fed up with late trains will fume over the punctuality record of other cities.

Latest figures show nine out of 10 trains in Britain are punctual, and customer satisfaction has soared.

New suburban rail operator Metro promised fewer delays, but last month 16.6 per cent of trains were late.

The delays prompted a furious reaction from Herald Sun online readers, who gave the company a damning one out of 10 for service.

In Britain, passenger satisfaction with train punctuality and reliability was up 2 per cent to a record 83 per cent in a major survey for customer watchdog Passenger Focus last year.

About 24,000 trains operate every day in Britain and official figures from Network Rail, which operates rail infrastructure, show 91 per cent were on time over the past year.

The results are a dramatic improvement from 2003, when more than one in five trains were late.

Trains are regarded as being on time in Britain if they are within five minutes of their scheduled arrival time, or within 10 minutes for long distance journeys.

On the London Underground, which operates separately, almost 1.1 billion journeys were made last year.

An international comparison reveals Melbourne performs poorly, only beating the New York subway for punctuality.

The Los Angeles Metro had the best performance.

Public Transport Users Association president Daniel Bowen said systems in London or New York or Washington were up to the challenge of moving large numbers of people efficiently.

"You never have to wait long for a train," Mr Bowen said.

"If a train is cancelled in Melbourne, you could easily be waiting twenty minutes for the next one, even in the middle of peak hour.

"In many other big cities, there would be another train within a few minutes."